BSP 2015/2016 Season Changes and Announcements

We have some changes coming in the new competitive season, in efforts to create new opportunities and expand our ever-growing community impact. Please check through the announcements below and send us any questions or comments about what and how we’re doing.

This year, our competitive season will run from September to February, every slammer who signs up and completes the evening’s competition earns points; top 5 earn additional points to qualify for finals. This will place our Finals in March (instead of April), in order to give the selected team an extra month of preparation for next year’s National Poetry Slam, in Decatur, GA (August 1-7, 2016). BSP pays PSI membership and registration fees for the team for this event, but a lot of community fundraising will still be required.

We will be starting a new annual tradition at BSP, of sending a representative to the Women of the World Poetry Slam. This WOWps Qualifier will take place this November. Priority will be given to female-identifying artists, list capped at 12 slammers, with a requirement for the rep to have participated in one other slam (in the competitive season) prior to qualifier in order to be eligible to represent BSP at Women of the World Poetry Slam in Brooklyn, March 2016. Highest ranking female-identified artist of the evening wins a buy-in to WOWps. BSP pays PSI registration and membership for the event and will assist with one fundraising event within the season. More info for WOWps can be found at http://wowps2016.com/

Volunteers required for: Door, Timer, Scorekeeper – each month these three positions are required and earn a volunteer free admission; please contact us in advance to secure a volunteer spot and free admission.

We are looking for some new themed slams for the off-season slams and want your input! We’re planning a 1-2-3-4 minute slam for April, the winner of which will have the opportunity to represent BSP at the Individual World Poetry Slam in 2016. Do you have ideas for different themed slams? Perhaps a songwriters slam? A cover slam? We want to hear from you before we dive off the deep end.

Also; our monthly writing workshops, under the HYWire banner will be returning on the 4th Thursday, each month, at the Burlington Library’s Tansley Woods Branch, from 7-9pm, from September 2015 to June 2016. This is a great place to share an unfinished piece of writing for critique or feedback, as well as a place to get some writing prompts and talk shop with other writers. We’re looking for feedback on what our community wants to see happen with this workshop, but please “like” our HYWire page (www.facebook.com/hywire) and keep up to date with our workshop series.

That seems like enough new info for now, we really hope to see more people out and onstage this season; please let us know how you think we’re doing, and if there’s anyway we can continue to improve the BSP experience.